Vending machines are installed in various places indoors and outdoors and widely used for convenience. Vending machines vend a variety of products including beverages and foods. In order to improve the efficiency of stocking vending machines with products or to increase sales of products at vending machines, vending machines with various features and structures have been proposed and used. For example, a technique that pre-packages products into cartridges and installs the cartridges in a vending machine has been proposed to enhance the efficiency of stocking vending machines with products.
Placing a variety of products into a product storage cabinet divided to rows and columns of compartments requires much care in placing correct products in correct positions, which results in low work efficiency. Therefore, a technique is used that does not directly place products into the product storage cabinet divided to rows and columns of compartments. The technique employs a cartridge which can individually contain products. The products are pre-packaged into the cartridge, and the cartridge is replaceably set in a cartridge storage frame of the product storage cabinet. This technique allows improving work efficiency and avoiding misplacement of products (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 06-150119).
Typical conventional vending machines, with or without the use of the cartridge, have a plurality of storage compartments and dispense a product from a specific storage compartment according to selection by a customer. One compartment contains a single type of products. Vending machines generally sell a plurality of types of products, and sales of the products vary by product types. However, since the number of compartments is limited, conventional vending machines stock the same number of the products whose sales are different. Therefore, popular products sell out faster than unpopular products, decreasing sales efficiency.
To avoid sellout, it is required to transport products to vending machines in accordance with the sale of popular products, decreasing the efficiency of restocking vending machines. Conventional vending machines can increase the number of popular products to contain by stocking the same products in a plurality of storage compartments. However, they are unable to accurately adjust the number of stock products in accordance with sales data, and thus fail in efficient product stocking or effective product selling.
The present invention has been accomplished to solve the above problems and an object of the present invention is thus to provide a vending machine capable of effective sale of a plurality of types of products.